{"id":33184,"date":"2023-06-30T22:23:22","date_gmt":"2023-07-01T04:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wind-gusts-knock-tree-branches-down-around-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:07:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:07:01","slug":"wind-gusts-knock-tree-branches-down-around-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wind-gusts-knock-tree-branches-down-around-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Wind gusts knock tree branches down around Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=747eb078-a6cb-588c-8267-4afe7c12ff9a&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" alt=\"Canopy Tree Specialists clean up branches on Madison Street in Cortez. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Canopy Tree Specialists clean up branches on Madison Street in Cortez. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>On Thursday, the city of Cortez experienced high wind gusts, resulting in multiple broken tree limbs across town.<\/p>\n<p>The city received reports of broken limbs near at Maple and Third streets, according to Don Cornett, and crews responded first thing Friday morning to clean up the debris.<\/p>\n<p>A <em id=\"emphasis-f2182dd8951e55f67d3134fcbd7605c4\">Journal<\/em> reporter found broken limbs in front lawns on Madison and Arbecam streets, north of Montezuma Avenue. Canopy Tree Specialists were raking branches on a lawn on Madison Street Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=379eb5ab-c460-5301-aeae-88130786d6d8&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"3556\" alt=\"Tree branches came down on a front lawn on Arbecam Street in Cortez. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Tree branches came down on a front lawn on Arbecam Street in Cortez. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Power lines were not affected, and no power outages occurred in Cortez because of the wind, Empire Electric said. There were power outages related to routine maintenance in the area.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-c8ab19489373f71219b8586a94e8bd69\">The Journal<\/em> reached out to Jim Andrus, local weather spotter in Cortez, to learn more about what caused the winds. Andrus didn\u2019t witness the gusts, but his best guess was a microburst had occurred, and it was a localized event.<\/p>\n<p>Microbursts most often occur during a thunderstorm, when the center of the storm clouds collapse, sending a column of air to the ground, Andrus said. The air column hits the ground and spreads out in all directions, causing high wind speeds for a short period of time.<\/p>\n<p>There was no thunderstorm in the area Thursday afternoon, so Andrus estimated that a towering cumulus cloud could have collapsed, having a similar effect. According to the Weather Underground website, radars showed the gusts to reach 36 mph, with wind speeds of 24 mph just before 5 p.m. Thursday, with temperatures of 93 degrees Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n<p>Andrus agreed that this was a unique event, and added that broken tree limbs would face away from the center of the weather event, helping to pinpoint where the column of air struck the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>weather spotter estimates a microburst occurred, despite lack of thunderstorm conditions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82091,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33184\/revisions\/82091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33184"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}